It has long been known that the first few weeks of life for animals are critical for growth and survival. However, livestock animals, particularly pigs and calves are commonly weaned at a younger age (1 to 35 days of age) to reduce the cost of production and in some cases to improve health status. Much has been learned about management methods necessary for early-weaning; however challenges remain for livestock producers because the animals are young and susceptible to disease. Many factors affect the susceptibility of the young animal to disease but, disease exposure and immunological status are two of the critical factors in an animal's susceptibility to a particular disease. The dam is a recognized vector and source of disease exposure for enteric and respiratory disease agents. Thus, the young animal (1 to 28 days of age) is removed from the dam (early-weaning) to prevent the horizontal transmission of certain diseases. A technique such as early-weaning benefits the animal through improved health but feeding and management of such a young animal becomes a very formidable task. Young animals are adept at nursing, digesting, and absorbing the nutrients from their primary nutrient source, milk. The feeding of milk, however, is labor intensive and expensive. Therefore, producers attempt to feed simpler, more cost-effective diets based on grains and forages. The digestive system of the young animal is not mature enough to digest such a simple diet. Thus, very young pigs and calves in the postweaning period experience a syndrome identified as postweaning lag.
The symptoms of post weaning lag usually include slow growth, low feed intake, and frequent occurrence of diarrhea. The syndrome can result in moderate to high production losses on commercial farms. The loss is the result of slow growth, high morbidity (25%) and high mortality rates (up to 10% of the population). The lightest and youngest animals in the population are often the most severely affected. Postweaning lag is most common in pigs (1 to 35 days of age) exposed to environmental and microbiological challenges.
Nutrient-rich, highly-digestible feeds have been specifically formulated to counter the effects of weaning on feed intake of the young animal. Such feeds/diets are very nutritious and highly fortified to provide the energy and nutrients for rapid growth. The diets consist primarily of processed grains (corn, wheat, barley, rice, etc.), gelatinized starches, milk products (dried skim milk, dried whey, lactose, dried whey protein concentrate, casein, etc.), sugars (dextrose, glucose, sucrose), fats and/or oils (lard, grease, vegetable oils, coconut oil, etc.), animal proteins (fishmeal, bloodmeal, meat meal, etc.), and refined, extruded soybeans (soy protein isolate, soy protein concentrate). However, even with the utilization of such high-quality diets, early-weaned pigs do not consume adequate quantities of feed to promote rapid growth. Upon weaning, these pigs frequently must be encouraged to eat using labor intensive practices such as frequent-feeding of liquid milk-replacers. The digestive capacity of these pigs is simply too immature to digest and assimilate nutrients from the grain and/or vegetable-based diets upon which the animal must now subsist. Thus, without the essential enzymes to digest and convert several complex energy sources into utilizable energy substrates such as glucose and short-chain fatty acids (from adipose tissue breakdown) and amino acids. The physiologically-catabolic state results in a loss of body weight from weaning to 14 days postweaning due to negative protein and energy balance.
Post-weaning lag (poor appetite, slow growth and diarrhea) is dramatically-reduced when newly-weaned pigs are fed a starter diet supplemented with dried animal plasma. Appetite and weight gain in small, newly weaned pigs is improved with supplementation of the pig starter with spray-dried animal plasma (DAP) (Hansen et al., 1993; de Rodas et al., 1995; Kats et al., 1994). In fact, the dietary improvement resulting from the supplementation of the newly-weaned pig feed with dried animal plasma is so dramatic it has allowed the swine industry to reduce weaning age from 28 to 21 days of age without a noticeable change in the incidence of the postweaning lag syndrome. The protein components involved in the response to dietary supplementation of dried animal plasma include immunoglobulin and albumin (Weaver and Russell, 1994; Cain et al., 1994; Owen et al., 1994). The product available to the industry to date, (and evaluated in the previously mentioned references) has been a spray-dried animal plasma in powder form. Spray-dried animal plasma in the powder form has been available to the food and feed industries for many years. The product has at times been co-dried with other feed or food ingredients such as milk or whey-products.
It has also been discovered that a blended powdered feed supplement comprising animal plasma protein and a microbial fermentation product of primarily amylase is even more effective in improving weaned pig performance than animal plasma protein alone. Yoder U.S. Pat. No. 5,575,999.
According to the invention it has been discovered, quite unexpectedly, that the average daily gain of animals fed a diet containing a granular form of spray-dried animal plasma is significantly better than animals fed a diet supplemented with similar levels of animal plasma powder, this effect is not observed with the red blood cell component of blood.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a granulated protein feed supplement which will increase weight gain and feed efficiency for animals.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a protein supplement with increased bio-efficacy obtained by granulating plasma or any of its components.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide feed or a protein supplement with increased flowability, reduced dustiness and improved ease of handling.
These and other objectives will become apparent from the following description of the invention.